Repost: An open letter to the Puritans (a poem)

Repost: An open letter to the Puritans (a poem)

Upon learning that my state has an anti-abortion bill in committee that not only bans abortion from the moment of conception but also declares the state exempt from federal laws and federal court rulings, it’s time to repost this. (I have replicated my subsequent edits, so this version matches the one included in my newest collection of poems.) [Update 5/17/19: I received a reply from my state senator; the bill never received a hearing in committee, and is dead, since the 2019 legislative session has been adjourned.]

Parts are falling offlike fingers from a movie leper

First the handsnow the feetand what’s left is heating upand generally feeling uncomfortable

But there’s work to be doneso there’s nothing left
but to soldier on

Nothing’s going to happen
if we sit around doing nothing

Thank you, Puritansfor destroying any hope of leisure

Every day, we have to work work work workuntil we’ve spent so much time
worrying about work and moneythat we’ve got no energy left for fucking

Even if we did, nobody would want to fuck usbecause we’re so ugly on the outsideand so screwed up on the inside—and we have to say ‘screwed up’because y’all were too uptight to say ‘fuck’where anybody could hear you

No wonder we invented the assembly linewhat better way to turn our pathetic human existenceinto cogs in the machineryinherently inert and easily replaceable

Yes, you Puritans past and presenthave a lot to answer for—and don’t think it’s your Lord
who’s going to be conducting the interrogation

We are the sons and daughters
of your sons and daughtersand their sons and daughters and so onand all we inbred descendants demand satisfaction—which we won’t ever get
because you’ve trained us over generationsto be incapable of enjoying ourselves

We’re very good at guilt and shame, howeverThere you have taught us well indeed!

And, of course, you’ve managed
to make an industry of that as well—books and workshops and pills
and years and years of therapyall for the low, low price of two bucks a minute

And we have to be ashamed about that, too

At this point, having a few digits fall offwould feel like getting off easy

Now they say trauma resides in the DNAso we could be free of all you have made of usand still accrue damage over the yearsending up as screwed up as we are now anyway

Granted, that one is not your fault—
but trauma multiplies exponentially
or logarithmically or somethingso you’re by no means off the hook

If time travel ever does become a realityyou, my Puritan forebears
are never going to leave Europeand the powers that were
will do what they should have doneand lock up your worst tendenciesso they will not infect anyone else

Maybe then we can have the lives
we should have been givenand I will be out
enjoying the sun on a spring afternooninstead of sitting here, hunched over the typewriterputting down on paper
whatever spews forth from my prefrontal cortexand wanting things to be better—which they’re not, because I grew up in a culturethat wants to enjoy itselfbut can’t because of the accumulated burden
it has inheritedfrom a bunch of dead Europeans
who couldn’t have things their wayso they took all their farm implementsand high-tailed it to the Americaswhere they made sure
that the folks who were already therecouldn’t have anything they wanted eitherand would spend the next seven generationsfighting for basic respect and dignityagainst a land of entitled Puritan descendantswithout any sense of heritage
beyond the complexion
of a piece of bleached, colorless fabric

Except, strangely enough, for their current leaderwho looks like a Creamsicle collided with a pandaand fused together like Brundlefly—and has no problem whatsoever with fucking

However, we’re not willing to be fucked, O Puritansand not because you have trained us to be ashamedbut because you’ve done enough damageand we refused to be damaged

Prepare thyselves, thou art going down…

(originally posted 19 May 2018—reposted 16 May 2019)

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